In 1911, the Kavala Tobacco Congress organized its first public meeting to pronounce its intention to act as a sort of mutual aid society for the tobacco-cultivating and export-oriented mercantile community of the port city of Kavala and its hinterlands. At this gathering, nearly all the notable families of the city and the prominent religious figures of the region spoke or stood by in defensive solidarity for the collective rights of the working peoples living there. Imams, priests, and rabbis agreed on the urgency of defending the multi-confessional community of the city against the exploits of finance capitalism orchestrated from Vienna and channeled through Istanbul. It would seem that concerted efforts since the 1870s to accumulate capital via the tobacco industry achieved an unintended goal in mobilizing the population and creating the circumstances within which mass politics would emerge. In addition, the manner in which political identities would congeal was not based solely on sect or language but on class and the particular relationship one cultivated with financial institutions and the doyens of industry. The Régie Company, a conglomerate of European financial institutions, had received a monopoly over tobacco sales for the entirety of the empire. In order to ensure that Ottoman merchants and cultivators played by the rules of the Régie, the company established its own private police force (kolcular) which was responsible for ensuring adherence to its book of codes (nizamname). This violent mode of accumulating capital relied on preconceived ideas about the sectarian identity of the local population. For example, in the 1880s the Régie sought to sideline Greek Orthodox employees in favor of the Muslim population on the island of Lesbos, just a day’s journey south of Kavala. Premised both on the more numerous tobacco-trading networks that local non-Muslims could access in Egypt and Syria and on privileges they enjoyed under European capitulatory protection, the result of this decision was the partial sectarianization of local peoples based on financial interests. By looking at the seemingly contrary modes of political identity formation in Kavala and Lesbos, I argue that sectarianism, and the politicization of identity more generally, is historically variable and that financial apparatuses mobilize both for and against sectarian tendencies. More importantly, finance capitalism plays a significant role in the creation of the conditions enabling the emergence of mass politics and transforming sectarianism and nationalism into modes of political being.